1. Technical Field
This invention relates in general to computer software and, more particularly, to electronic conference software.
2. Description of the Related Art
The popularity of the computer networks and, in particular, the Internet, has changed the ways in which people communicate. The Internet has made electronic mail (e-mail) and electronic conferencing available to the masses. Whereas the telephone was the only means for real-time communication several years ago, many people now use the Internet to communicate for both personal and business purposes.
The Internet is a large network which connects millions of users worldwide. The number of current Internet subscribers greatly exceeds the number of subscribers envisioned by the designers of the Internet. Further, the amount of data transferred over the Internet has exploded over the last few years, due in major part to the World Wide Web (WWW). The WWW provides a graphical interface to the Internet. Accordingly, almost all Web sites are rich in graphics and sound which are automatically downloaded to users as they connect to a site. More recently, video files, such Las MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group) and AVI (Audio Video Interleaved, also known as MICROSOFT Video for Windows) are being addled to Web sites to provide motion pictures and digital audio for downloading.
With each added feature, the amount of data communicated over the Internet increases, causing delays and frustration to users. Some experts contend that the backbone of the Internet will become overburdened in the near future due to the increase in the number of users and the amount of data being transferred during a typical session.
One type of electronic conferencing program which is becoming increasingly useful in business and personal matters is meeting software. A meeting program allows two or more users to communicate aurally and visually. The aural portion is performed by digitizing each participants voice and sending the audio packets to each of the other participants. The video portion may, for example, send graphic images of selected participants to each participant of the meeting and/or allow users to share a drawing program.
The audio and video portions take significant bandwidth. Aside from burdening the Internet infrastructure, such activity can be frustrating to the meeting participants, since the audio and video information will take a significant amount of time to transfer to each participant.
Another type of electronic conferencing program is the chat program. A chat program allows one or more participants to communicate through text typed in at the keyboard of each participant of the chat session. The video portion of a chat session can be accomplished through various techniques. Some chat rooms have no video portion and therefore only display the text of messages from the participants, while others use graphics to represent each user. Eliminating the video portion reduces the needed bandwidth relative to meeting software, but also some of the functionality.
Therefore, a need has arisen to provide effective communication through the Internet or other network without using excessive bandwidth.